In the blood-brotherhood ceremony, when each of the two men drinks
or smokes in a cigarette a drop of the other's blood drawn with a
bambooknife, a fowl is in many cases waved over them and then killed,
and occasionally a pig also is killed. In such a case the man who
has killed the fowl will carry its carcase to the door of the house,
and there he will wave towards the heavens a frayed stick moistened
with its blood, while he announces the facts of the ceremony to Bali
Penyalong. So that here again the fowl seems to play the part of a
messenger. The carcase and the bloody stick are afterwards put up
together on a tall pole before the house. After going through this
ceremony a man is safe from all the members of the household to
which his blood-brother belongs; and in the case of two chiefs all
the members of either household are bound to those of the other by
a sacred tie.
Fowls' eggs are sometimes put on the cleft poles as sacrifices. In
one instance, when we were engaged in fishing a lake with a large
party in boats, we came upon a row of eight poles stuck upright at
the edge of the lake, each holding a fowl's egg in its cleft upper
end. These had just been put there by the crew of one of the canoes
as an offering to the crocodiles, which were regarded as the most
influential of the powers of the lake and able to ensure us good sport.
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